


Count For Me

by loststardust



Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: Anxiety, Comfort, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fluff, what can i say its just tom being practical and good
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-10-26
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:01:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27208543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loststardust/pseuds/loststardust
Summary: Tommy finds you fretting, chewing yourself up with worry, and helps you through the mess in his own way.
Relationships: Tommy Shelby/Original Female Character(s), Tommy Shelby/Reader, Tommy Shelby/You
Comments: 10
Kudos: 91





	Count For Me

**Author's Note:**

> i’m not gonna say the reader is having a panic attack specifically, more that they’re experiencing a lot of anxiety, so take that with a pinch of salt pls. i’m not suggesting this is how all anxiety feels or that it can be alleviated like this every time, im just basing it on my own experiences so enjoy!

You’re sat in the kitchen, or rather, the stairwell to the kitchens. You had every intention of making it there, of sitting at the large oak table in the fore-room, and having tea. Bread. Of letting Frances relax and serving yourself. But, instead, you’re on the last step down, legs bouncing on the balls of your feet.

It can only be described as fretting, incessant worry; your mind is agonising over things already done, over what’s to come next. It isn’t guns, or business, or family arguments that’s got you. It’s something invisible. Unknown, but biting away regardless. It’s sitting on the step and thinking about everything, and nothing — it’s losing yourself entirely, feeling the hand tighten around your throat, the dread, the weight of it in your chest. You sit and you feel afraid. After all you’ve seen in the world, all you’ve been through with Tommy. It’s your own head that works itself against you now, your own commentary that rots your mind in the quiet moments. Fuck. If you said it aloud they’d laugh you out the room. If you told Pol she’d say you were sick, that you needed air and spirits, and none of this Shelby wreckage to pull you down.

‘In the kitchen, Sir.’

Oh, Christ, Tommy’s home. You hear him, direct and toward where you’re hiding. From his footsteps, it seems like he’s coming from the opposite wing, so he’ll make it into the kitchen before you ever did.

He calls your name through the hallway. It bounces off the cool tiles.

‘I’m here, Tommy,’ you say back in a false tone; you dread him finding you more than the rest of it. 

You’ve got maybe a minute to collect yourself, but from the way your feet are sinking through the stone of the floor beneath you, that’s not going to happen. He arrives in the kitchen, says your name again. He can’t see you from where he is.

‘On the stairs,’ you tell him.

Once he’s in front of you, your energy spikes. It’s easier to ignore the feeling when you’re with him. He tucks it away for you, somewhat, just a bit. ‘What is it?’ he asks, shaking his head slightly, his lips parted. A cigarette leaks smoke from between his fingers. He’s taken his coat off, but the jacket’s still there. Still dressed like he could leave again at any moment.

‘Nothing.’ You smile. ‘Are you back now?’

‘For now,’ he answers. He steps forward, places the back of his hand against your forehead. ‘Are you sick?’

‘No. Just wanted to sit somewhere.’

He doesn’t believe you, he knows you too well. You still your knees but they’re bouncing again before you can offer an explanation.

‘Tell me,’ he insists, clueless.

Where do you start? What could you possibly say that would make sense. I was going to make lunch, Tommy, but then I sat down here and I couldn’t get up again. ‘Nothing,’ you repeat, pausing to force a swallow. ‘I don’t know, really.’

He takes a drag. On the exhale, he offers the smoke to you, silent but willing to help. You shake your head; it’s not your habit, it doesn’t calm you like it does with him.

‘Has something happened?’ he asks. He’s patient, waiting for you to give him a way in, prepared to go slow when you need it.

‘No, nothing’s happened.’ Nothing you knew of. You were doing fine, going about the day like normal, and then suddenly you weren’t. It had already swamped you before you realised it was coming. ‘It’s just my head,’ you say, forcing the words over a breath that hadn’t quite made it. ‘I think it’s out to get me, Tom.’

He sighs. His lips pour smoke onto the tiles as he looks down. Another stress for him: you sat on his shoulders like the rest of it did, weighed him down without meaning to. You feel yourself rock forward, your head pulling into your chest, like there’s string attached from your chin to your heart and now it’s constricting. ‘Sorry,’ you pant, though you may have said it in your head. It could’ve been a thought amongst the sea and you wouldn’t have known. Sorry for the stress, Tommy, sorry for it all.

‘Hey,’ he says, repeating it firmly after a pause. ‘Hey. Look at me.’ His hand goes to your face, fingers leading your chin upwards until your gaze is on him. ‘Whatever it is, it’s just noise, alright? Just shit in the trough.’

Your lids drop a fraction. ‘Tommy…’

‘No.’ He shakes his head. ‘You’re here, with me, right, in the kitchen. Don’t let it pull you under.’

You don’t want to. You’re scanning him, looking for something to ground you, the gold of his cufflink, the button of his waistcoat. Nothing sticks. You’re trying to focus but it’s splitting your attention again. Filling your head with the noise, the pull, the drag. ‘I think I’m going mad,’ you say. Your head’s so tight you can’t make sense of it.

His brows draw together. You focus on the crease in the skin between them. ‘What is it?’ he asks. ‘Eh? What’s worrying you so much?’

‘I don’t know,’ you answer honestly. It sounds like a plea but it’s all you can give him. 

You feel like a horse on the track; everything’s past you, behind you, loud in the stands and betting against you. There’s a worry to your left but it’s overtaken by the one on your right. So much at once, too often and too fast to know which is the biggest problem, which is the one causing the damage. If you could pluck something out, you would. If you could tell him, it’d be the first thing you did. There isn’t an answer to his question that doesn’t just make it worse — the more you try to put a name to it, or explain, the harder it gets to breathe. You can feel your heartbeat in your wrists.

Swearing, you drop your head again like it’s a lead weight, letting his fingertips drag up your cheek with the motion. ‘I can’t tell,’ you say weakly. ‘Feels like I’m drowning.’ 

The ring you’re wearing sits loose on your index finger; you spin it around the knuckle nervously, forcing a shallow breath each time the ruby completes a loop. If you look at him again you might cry. He didn’t ask for this, he didn’t know what to do with you anymore than you knew yourself.

Clearing his throat once, Tommy puts the cigarette between his lips and bends to grab you with both hands. He takes you by the elbows, thumbs tight on your arms, and pulls you to your feet before you have room to complain. You try to avoid his gaze, but his head ducks and chases your eyes until you give in.

‘Listen,’ he starts. He takes the cigarette out, blows the smoke away before he talks. ‘I won’t let you, alright? No-one’s drowning here.’ He looks certain, dedicated, his eyes dig through yours and back into the noise. ‘There’s nothing going on in there that we can’t sort. Okay?’

You want to believe him, so you nod. The next breath you take swells your chest into his.

‘Come here,’ he says briskly, pulling you after him as he walks you deeper into the kitchen. ‘When we were in France—stand there.’ You’re put by the table. He goes to the nearest drawer, pilfering through the silverware as he continues, ‘When we were in France, they told us we had to count.’

‘Count?’

‘To still our hands.’ He turns, pushing the drawer shut with his hip, and files through the forks he’s now holding. ‘Bullets, cards. Saw John counting his teeth once.’

You blink like it’ll help you listen. Everything he’s saying is going in, but bouncing back again. It rattles in your ear canal like coins down a well.

‘Here,’ he says, offering them to you. ‘Count them.’

You hesitate. Then he grabs your wrist, sets your palm straight, and pours the cutlery into it.

‘Go on.’

Mumbling an agreement, you turn to the table and put the first fork onto the wood. One. Two. You hope he doesn’t notice the slight shake along your fingers, the clumsiness as you pass forks from one hand to the other.

‘Do it out loud,’ he guides, as he stands beside you. He exhales, dragging it out and pushing the smoke over your shoulder; you’d forgotten he even had one lit.

‘Three,’ you say. ‘Four.’ 

All those cigarettes. Lips barely his unless there’s one between them. They’ll get him one day, you think. The cough will get worse and then it’ll be you, on your own in this big house, you looking after Charlie, you with the ache and the grief and the silence.

‘Stop thinking,’ he chides. ‘Count.’

‘Five, six, seven.’ You sigh. The forks clatter on top of one another. ‘Eight, nine. This is stupid, Tommy. Ten.’ You turn to him, expectant of something else, something more helpful.

He just raises his eyebrows, gesturing for you to pick them up again. ‘Now do it over.’

‘Again?’

He nods. The cigarette is extinguished, flicked to the floor and crushed between his sole and the tile. ‘You do it again, and again,’ he lists, ‘until it feels like you can breathe.’

‘Really?’

‘Really.’

It takes four rounds of it before your chest loosens; four tens, over and over, forks placed down and picked up again as you count. He stands in silence the whole time, his hands in his pockets, his eyes on the table. How he doesn’t tire of it, you don’t know. He clears his throat occasionally but doesn’t say anything until you break the rhythm.

‘I think it’s worked,’ you mumble, taking care as you set the last fork down. ‘I feel better.’

It’s not all gone, but you feel calmer. Stiller. Your hands aren’t as jittery and the room feels big again, cold and empty and utilitarian.

He sighs, heavily, thankfully. The noise loud and partnered with a rough tone. ‘Alright,’ he says. He clicks into motion, pulling his hands free and turning to you so that he can bracket them around your face. His fingers are rough, warm, grounding. The rings stamp your cheeks, cold like ice. ‘What did I say, eh? Nothing we couldn’t sort.’

You smile limply and put a hand to his wrist. ‘Thank-you, Tommy.’

You hadn’t expected him to break through it, to make you pause. Breathe. It’s usually the other way around, you calming him. You sifting through the muck. It had never crossed your mind that it would work in reverse.

‘Next time,’ he says quietly, ‘you tell me.’ His chin dips a fraction, blue eyes laced with intent. ‘You tell me as soon as it get’s too much, alright?’

‘Okay,’ you promise, nodding between his palms. ‘Sorry.’

His lip tweaks slightly. ‘What have you got to be sorry for?’ he asks. Then he tilts up to kiss your forehead and, pulling back, utters ‘my silly girl’ under his breath.

You can’t smile. The question almost loses you again. You have plenty to be sorry for, you think, handfuls of apologies shoved into each corner of your brain. ‘Let’s do something,’ you say quickly, chasing the scatter away. ‘Distract me, please.’

He kisses you, lips firm and sure against yours in an agreement, a promise. ‘I have something to show you,’ he says afterwards. His grip on your face drops and he takes a hand instead, fingers curling around your palm. ‘The new horse is here.’

‘It is?’ You cling to him, put your free hand around his bicep and pull tight to his side like the closeness will help. He looks at you like he understands. ‘Well, show me then,’ you push, almost able to smile into it. ‘She was pretty from what I remember.’

‘Very pretty,’ he agrees. ‘Come on.’

You follow him through the house and across the drive. He doesn’t stop talking the whole way, which is unlike him, but he knows any silence will just cause you to slip again, to overthink until you’re tumbling. You answer his questions, dumb as they are, like he doesn’t already know the answers. You tell him what you had for breakfast, what you read in the paper. He asks, and he drawls, and he comments on the bloom of the roses as you pass them. He keeps going and going, until you’re so wrapped up in him, and the house, and the world outside, that everything else falls quiet. Peaceful. He fills your head with his own voice and you thank him for it. You thank him, and you hold on like it’s the only thing keeping you above the water.

‘You alright?’ he asks, checking once you’ve reached the stables.

‘Yes, Tom.’ You smile, meaning it. ‘I’m with you, remember?’


End file.
